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Although (as a worldbuilder myself) I admire Chris Wayan's planets and attention to detail (those planets are all modelled in 3D, using plaster and paint), I find the descriptions of the societies on those worlds somewhat embarrassing. Sure, there might be a few planets that are hedonistic paradises with loose morals, but surely not all of them?

in the old Japan the japanese were very fearless people and they simply committed infanticide of unwanted babies... in south pacific they did not do that but they lived STARVING on overopulated small islands...

Although (as a worldbuilder myself) I admire Chris Wayan's planets and attention to detail (those planets are all modelled in 3D, using plaster and paint), I find the descriptions of the societies on those worlds somewhat embarrassing. Sure, there might be a few planets that are hedonistic paradises with loose morals, but surely not all of them?

for this reason, Albania (poor neighboring country with strict sex moralilty for women) is NOT a popular touristic destination for teen male europeans and we dream to go anywhere else: Thailand, Brazil, somebody Kenya etc...

I remember an unusual world-building site: the exo-animals were described 100% seriously and drawn professionally , but they were undoubtably erect penis-shaped :flash: and also their latin names were allusive to it... I'm pretty sure I've seen it for real - it's not a twisted fantasy of mine... do you remember it too?

I remember an unusual world-building site: the exo-animals were described 100% seriously and drawn professionally , but they were undoubtably erect penis-shaped :flash: and also their latin names were allusive to it... I'm pretty sure I've seen it for real - it's not a twisted fantasy of mine... do you remember it too?

The artist, Nemo Ramjet, has designed a vast array of credible-seeming animals to live on this world; only some of them use adapted genitals as limbs, but the reasoning behind these evolutionary developments seem sound enough.
I would expect limb-like structures to evolve in a large number of different ways throughout the cosmos- sometimes evolving from tentacles, sometimes evolving from tusks, teeth or other mouthparts, scales, or protective spines. Appendages that evolve from reproductive organs don't seem too far from the realm of possibility.

I'm not sure what you mean, and this might be a language thing. It'll be nice when they finish Albania? What does that mean?

he was joking: it could be a nice country (unlike many dry muslim countries, it has plenty of water and it's NOT plagued with war) but they don't like to work: buildings, bridges etc. are left unfinished and can't be used... in short they are the evil small brothers of Turks

I should have been more specific when I said that. The parts of Albania I went to were basically a big building site. They seem to be gearing to a future tourist boom that may never happen, but for the sake of their economy, I hope it does.

on the contrary, in early '90s everybody rushed here to italy by inflatable boats to raise some money (to their merit, I admit that they could already speak italian)... in practice the country lost 60% of its population... adult girls just "worked" on the road (there are always some clients who don't prefer West Africa "chocolate" )...

I should have been more specific when I said that. The parts of Albania I went to were basically a big building site. They seem to be gearing to a future tourist boom that may never happen, but for the sake of their economy, I hope it does.

Achieving Sub-Millimagnitude Precision from the Ground: the Capabilities of ARCTIC and the LHS 1140 System
Roberts, Jessica Elizabeth; Cruz-Arce, Carlos E.; Berta-Thompson, Zachory

As TESS observes most stars for only 28 days, many TESS planetary candidates will require future observations by other facilities in order to be properly vetted. Ground-based observations of these candidates can reject false positives, update mid-transit times, refine planetary parameters, and provide long-term monitoring of interesting systems. Ground-based telescopes achieve these science goals in part due to their larger size compared to TESS's 0.1m diameter lens. However, most observations from the ground struggle to achieve precisions better than 1 millimagnitude. The new CCD imager ARCTIC, installed on the 3.5m Apache Point Observatory Telescope, attains extreme precision by combining its large collecting area (1000× larger than TESS) with a diffuser that spreads the stellar PSF into a stable top-hat. We test the performance of this instrument by observing multiple transits of LHS 1140b and LHS 1140c. LHS 1140 is a nearby M-dwarf orbited by two rocky, near Earth-sized planets, including one in the habitable zone. This system therefore presents a unique opportunity to study two rocky planets in very different temperature regimes around the same star. Our observations double the number of published LHS 1140b and 1140c transits, and we use these to update the ephemeris and better constrain the planetary parameters. We find ARCTIC achieves a RMS of 150ppm on LHS 1140 for data binned to 20 minute timescales. Based on our success with the LHS 1140 system, we predict that ARCTIC will prove a useful instrument for future TESS follow-up on both smaller and fainter planet candidates as TESS moves into the northern hemisphere this year.

Many rocky exoplanets are heavier and larger than the Earth and have higher surface gravity. This makes space-flight on these worlds very challenging because the required fuel mass for a given payload is an exponential function of planetary surface gravity, exp(g0). We find that chemical rockets still allow for escape velocities on Super-Earths up to 10× Earth mass. More massive rocky worlds, if they exist, would require other means to leave the planet, such as nuclear propulsion. This is relevant for space colonization and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

As long as we are talking about super-Earth civilizations, what if Earth was a super-Earth? Eye-opening article with some things I hadn't expected, like steam planets, water planets with pressure ice at the core, and Earth not being a good place to live.

As long as we are talking about super-Earth civilizations, what if Earth was a super-Earth? Eye-opening article with some things I hadn't expected, like steam planets, water planets with pressure ice at the core, and Earth not being a good place to live.

It's so unfortunate that most of the exoplanets we've discovered so far are either gas giants or super-Earths. Once the James Webb Telescope launches, we'll probably be able to find planets similar to our own size and atmospheric composition. I think there's a good chance we'll find that surface liquid water worlds such as ours are far common than we initially thought.